


Men of a Certain Age

by Prosodi



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:01:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prosodi/pseuds/Prosodi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The history of Lupin and Jigen's relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Men of a Certain Age

They aren't partners, they aren't anything - not for five years anyway. It's something they all agree on: things have gotten too hot in Japan, that it would be better to split up and lay low for a while if they want to stay out of prison. It's a good idea and at the time Jigen agrees to it. He doesn't think to ask how long they’ll stay underground; he doesn’t expect it to last as long it does.

Jigen doesn't think about a lot of things - where he came from, mostly, and where he's going the rest of the time. It's a day to day deal. For example, three years after leaving Japan he is in a bar in Saratoga watching the bets for the horse races come in. He isn't much of a racetrack person, but he thinks Lupin was. A year after that he's working security in South Africa; they fire enough rounds that his gun feels hot all day and not from the sun pounding down on the back of his neck. So he doesn't expect it that after all that not thinking about the fact that this might be it, that his life might go back to a series of part time temp jobs (albeit well paid ones, and for good reason), when he gets the letter from Lupin calling him back the relief hits him like a punch to the gut.

Jigen lets himself worry then: not about what's going to happen, but what already has. Five years is a long time anyway; five years working largely in underground crime is a lifetime. They are, he thinks, probably both different men.

Mostly he's wrong, which he thinks is good. Lupin is still sharp and quick, good with a gun and better with talking his way out of bad situations. He still gets what he wants, both on the first job they work together and the ones after. Granted, it doesn't always stick - but that's the same as it's always been too. Stupid, to come back to this: Jigen is poorer than he's been in years and it doesn‘t matter.

But in other ways he's right. Those five years have changed the thief. It's in the cant of his shoulders and how his hands float into his pockets with greater ease. How he's a little bit louder and a little bit looser, the dangerous violent edge of his humor somehow tempered. He shoots less people, his escape plans more eccentric than ever, and often when they are standing near each other while Lupin is talking, he'll touch Jigen purposefully on the elbow or shoulder. He is easier, has settled into his own skin, and so must find it simpler to acquaint himself with Jigen's by way of casual brushes of knuckles and the familiar bump of their shoulders.

Jigen hardly makes note of it and it isn't distracting -- until he does and it is. It happens all at once. He thinks he could mark the day if someone asked him. No one does though; he doesn't even ask himself the question because it's supposed to be easier to ignore that way --

\-- they have drinks in a basement bar in Germany and on the way out Lupin's arm hooks over one of his shoulders and he leans against him, breath alcohol sweet when Lupin laughs. In a ventilation shaft in a Swiss bank, Lupin puts a hand on Jigen’s and whispers, "Wait," the light from the vent slashed across his rapt face --

\--, but it isn't.

 

At a party in Vienna, their disguises thin and the night only halfway toward when they need to think about getting serious, Jigen finds Lupin on the veranda nursing a drink and a cigarette, having just said finished dancing with the lady of the evening: a young princess or duchess. Jigen has difficulties with the language and doesn't really care to get it right because it doesn't matter.

"Can I get a light?" Jigen asks him as if they are strangers.

Lupin obliges. The flame of the lighter reflects orange in the glasses he's wearing; they make him look shockingly ordinary.

After a few drags on his cigarette, Jigen begins to say, "She's very cute," with regard to the princess - or duchess -, but Lupin cuts him off.

"What brings you to Vienna?" he asks, leaning against the stone wall of the veranda. He isn't looking at Jigen, but rather out into the park that stretches behind the manor. The end of his cigarette glows in the darkness, soft orange light on his nose and mouth.

Jigen hesitates and throws Lupin a confused look. "What--"

Lupin turns, hip against the wall. He offers his hand. "Franc Amrhein."

Jigen smirks and takes his hand. "Very minor relation to the Duke of Lauzun, I believe?"

"You've heard of me!" Lupin grins, delighted. He takes an excited drag from his cigarette.

Jigen shakes his head and lets his eyebrows climb. "Something like that," he murmurs, chuckling. They spent three hours in the hotel last night planning their cover stories.

"And you're the American tycoon, aren't you? The duchess was excited to have a proper American here. She said you were a real cowboy." Lupin pauses. The moment winds out and Jigen glances sideways, catching his eye. The look on Lupin's face is utterly foreign to him, half hidden behind his hand, cigarette loose in his fingers. The smoke twists up from the burning end of the cigarette and is mirrored in Lupin’s glasses. Despite that, Jigen gets the feeling that Lupin is evaluating him. His mouth is slightly open. He licks his lips.

Jigen looks away. "I own a few ranches in West Texas," he says, but barely hears himself. He takes a few short drags of his cigarette; the smoke burns acrid. Out in the garden, lanterns have been lit so people can walk there, but here they stand in mostly darkness in the shadow between one doorway to the veranda and the next.

Lupin shifts beside him, turning once more to lean across the wall. Jigen senses more than sees him finish his cigarette. Lupin stubs it to ash on the wall and as he withdraws his hand his knuckles brush against Jigen's side and their shoulders jostle. It could be an accident. Jigen doesn't think it is.

He turns slightly, heart hammering in his chest - Lupin must hear or feel it -, and he starts to speak: "Lupin, what are you doing?" except Lupin steps away just as he turns. He straightens his bow tie, rolls his shoulders and shoots Jigen a grin.

"Show time," he says, winks, and then goes back inside to where the orchestra has changed tempo and a number of previously worn out dancers has rotated in again, renewed by the vigor of the music.

Whatever that was is over. Jigen, confused, stands there for some time letting what remains of his cigarette burn. He slowly becomes aware that the feeling behind his rib cage, gnawing at his belly, is hurt. He swears repeatedly, too loudly, and violently scrapes the end of his cigarette to a pulp on the wall. He touches his face. He pinches his nose and fights down a knot in his throat that he wants to attribute to exhaustion. He goes to the bathroom and can't find anything there to punch so instead he quickly jerks himself off while standing over the ornate pedestal sink, his hand pressed so tight over his mouth that he can barely breathe at all.

Later, Lupin asks, "What happened here?" when he notices the places where Jigen's fingernails left little red marks on his cheek. His jaw is still sore and later he develops a yellowing bruise.

"Someone with rings on punched me on the way to the roof," he says mildly and pulls his hat lower.

The weather in France is moderate. Comparatively, Bordeaux feels feverish at the height of Vinexpo, the annual wine fair. They steal every case there of the vintage that places best in show and spend their sweet time drinking it at intervals on the road out of the country. That summer they steal two Flemish masterpieces only to lose them over the Atlantic. They make off with the most impressive stone from the world's largest emerald collection and Fujiko disappears with it. Their portion of six million euros goes up in flames. It is a long season of disappointments.

Jigen doesn't know if it's their run of bad luck that makes a difference or if he simply gets tired of telling himself no when for so long he's always done what he wanted, as there is little to prompt the change when it happens. They are both in the best health that they have been in in months (Lupin having shrugged out of the sling for his dislocated shoulder two days ago), and they sold a stolen plane for more than they had bargained. They are in money, they are as content as they are likely to be anytime soon, and somehow that is what makes him say it as they are going up the exposed stairwell on the side of the hotel in Rabat.

The night air is cool and the breeze is freshening from the West. Jigen says, "Wait, Lupin--" halfway between the second and third floor.

Lupin pauses and looks back at him. He grins. "Jigen-chan, if you can't make it up three flights of stairs maybe you should quit smoking."

That's not it, but he can't even say that. Jigen is four steps below him and it's too far to move with enough speed to just overwhelm him with his mouth and his hands, and Lupin is six inches taller than him from this vantage. He struggles to speak and can't look at him when he does, but instead fixes his gaze on some point to Lupin's left where the lights in the city are all blurring together. "I want to be with you," Jigen says and it even sounds fake to him.

Lupin laughs, thumb tucked into his belt. "What does that mean? You‘re with me right now."

"I don't know," Jigen says, bristling. He can't bring himself to apologize, that surge of desperation giving way to frustration and a seeping anger that only builds when Lupin stops and really looks at him.

"Jigen dear," he says in English. The sound of his voice in that language is uncomfortably nasal. Jigen wishes he'd stop.

"Nevermind," Jigen bites out. He turns and goes down the stairs, too angry to listen when Lupin calls out to him as he turns and again when he is at the bottom of the stairwell. Looking back before he gets too far from the hotel, he thinks he can see the outline of Lupin's shoulders in the moonlight where the thief is still standing where he left him.

When he lets himself into the room early in the morning, Lupin is sprawled across one of the beds asleep. He is still wearing his clothes though he's under the blanket. His arm hangs off the mattress and he's snoring.

Jigen eases himself past him in the narrow space between their beds, sitting on the edge of the other mattress. He is bone tired and doesn't want to be there, but doesn't know where to go otherwise. Jigen toes off his boots and shrugs out of his jacket. He has undone his tie and is working at the buttons on his sleeves when he happens to glance across and finds Lupin looking at him over the curve of his wrist, no longer snoring, his long face half obscured by the thin pillow.

Jigen immediately looks away, flustered and hotly embarrassed. His fingers fumble on the buttons and he swears when he can't fucking get them to come undone.

"C'mere," Lupin murmurs, groggy from sleep. He stretches out a limp hand and taps the edge of his bed with one calloused finger.

Grudgingly, Jigen transfers himself from one bed to the other, perching warily on the very edge of the mattress with his body mostly turned away from the other man.

Lupin's dexterity is low from just waking up and his knuckles bash lightly against the back of Jigen's hand. Lupin's fingers fumble over his wrist and he doesn't lift his face by which to see his task better. Instead he half blindly feels his way through unbuttoning one of Jigen's cuffs and then - after a demanding grunt that prompts Jigen to shift the other sleeve within reach - the next. His fingers don't really linger.

"Thank you," Jigen says awkwardly, his hat pulled down low over his eyes. "Go back to sleep."

Lupin says his name before he can move and it pins him where he sits on the edge of the mattress. Lupin's fingers tap absently on the sheet, thumb stroking a sleepy pattern against the cotton. "Jigen," he says again, this time with more clarity. "Take off your shirt."

He doesn't think about saying No. Instead, he pulls the tie out from under his collar and undoes all the buttons that he couldn't have undone earlier, though he fumbles with the last one. Jigen then gives Lupin a hard look in the dim light of the bedside lamp and finds the younger man studying the way Jigen's hands stutter there at the bottom of the button row. Jigen grunts and finishes with a jerky economy of movement, shrugging out of the shirt. He lets it fall into the space between the two beds.

Lupin's hand strays immediately to his belly and Jigen thinks he's going to be sick from the strain it puts on him. He can't bring himself to move while Lupin touches him: rough fingertips on his skin, thumb tracing the waist of his slacks and the buckle of his belt. Finally Lupin shifts and rolls up onto his side, balancing himself on his other arm. He isn't looking Jigen in the eye, but rather how his own hand moves against his partner's skin. Jigen thinks that as he shifts closer, Lupin's eyes fall to how the fabric pulls across his groin; the possibility is enough to make Jigen aroused, a pulse of heat that builds under the press of Lupin's fingers and settles between his legs.

"Open your pants," Lupin tells him, though his hand is there already and he is perfectly capable. Jigen hurries to it anyway, breathing already skewed. The clink of his belt is very loud and so is the sound of his zipper. He hesitates, hand over his underwear. Jigen looks to Lupin and finds there's no doubt where he's focused now, and so after a tense moment of uncertainty he takes his half hard dick out and begins to stroke himself.

Lupin's hand remains on his belly and their forearms scuff against one another as Jigen touches himself. Jigen thinks he can hear a low buzzing in his ears, but knows it's not really there when Lupin shifts suddenly closer and the hum of it dies. The sound of the sheets shuffling is deafening. Lupin's hand slides and he steadies himself against Jigen's hip, still without looking up at him. Instead, Lupin curls around him and hovers there with short hair tickling against Jigen's stomach and his mouth poised. Jigen can feel his breath gusting over the sensitive head of his erection. Lupin's chest is pressed against his knee and suddenly, startlingly, Jigen is aware of how hard Lupin's heart is beating.

The fingers on Jigen’s hip press harder and Jigen's hand stutters and grips hard around the base of his cock as Lupin leans down to take him into his mouth. The sensation is slick and wet, though it isn't until Lupin's mouth brushes the top of his hand that Jigen loses himself to it. He makes a stifled desperate noise, the first sound he's made at all in what feels like hours. He quickly covers his mouth with his other hand, gripping desperately to keep himself from crying out: a hundred little noises and ragged ways of saying Lupin's name as he starts to suck Jigen off in earnest.

Lupin's mouth swallows him down in fits and starts, strangely imprecise though Jigen can't complain because Lupin's whole body curves with the effort. In short order Jigen finds his hand straying from gripping his dick to Lupin's shoulder, and then to fisting in Lupin’s short hair, encouraging him to take more into the wet heat of his mouth, tongue tracing along the underside of his cock. Lupin makes a noise, low and growling in his throat, and it rumbles through Jigen - makes him shudder and whine against his hand. Afterward Lupin sways back up to suck and lap at the sensitive head, tongue stroking purposefully and cheeks hollowing.

Breathing through his fingers, Jigen scuffs his other hand clumsily from Lupin's hair and begins to frantically search under the blankets for Lupin's belt. He finds it and somehow opens it, jamming his hand in under the waistband of Lupin's boxers to find him hard and leaking precum. Lupin stutters at the touch, head butts him lightly in the belly and scrabbles at his thigh with his fingers. When he swallows Jigen down again, his appetite for it is voracious and his hips buck against Jigen's knuckles.

It surprises him when Lupin comes first: he pulls his mouth off of Jigen before he does it and buries his face in the curve of Jigen's hip just before his whole body shudders. He wails a little: pressing the incoherent sound into Jigen's exposed skin like it should mean something. Lupin's cum is hot on his fingers and it's a mess under the sheets. Jigen starts to move his hand to clean up, but then Lupin whines "Don't," desperately into his side, so Jigen settles his palm firmly against Lupin's abdomen. After a few moments, the sound of his breathing ragged, Lupin shifts back to use his mouth again.

Jigen can feel how Lupin's body shakes with the effort, how his stomach tenses and shifts, muscles coiling under the weight of his palm. He thinks it's that more than anything that drives him to climax, giving Lupin half a huff of a warning before he does: electric and hot and too intense to breathe much less make a noise into his palm still muffling his mouth. He thinks Lupin swallows some though he spits most of it on the filthy sheets. After a few seconds, Lupin wipes his spit and cum slick chin with his palm and uncurls, flopping back into the pillow.

A few seconds after that Jigen stretches out his legs in the space between the beds, finds his muscles cramping and grimaces. His knees creak when he rises and he staggers on the way to the bathroom to clean himself up. When he returns, Lupin has kicked the soiled top sheet and blanket of his own bed to the floor and is mostly settled with his arms jammed under the pillow and his lower half naked, having apparently used his pants to clean up the mess.

Jigen touches his shoulder and then his wrist, not entirely gently. "Take your shirt off," he says and Lupin, grumbling, does. Afterward, naked, he clambers across the narrow gap between the mattresses and burrows in under Jigen's blanket while Jigen finishes undressing. It's cool enough that the air makes the skin on his naked thighs pebble, the little hairs standing on end now that he isn't focused on the heat of Lupin's touch or his tongue. He hustles in under the covers himself, drawing his legs up between them. Lupin's hand briefly finds his knee, and then Lupin turns away and buries his face in the pillow. He falls asleep almost immediately.

It has been a long time, Jigen thinks, and they are both very different men.


End file.
